‘I didn’t have anything to eat last night. I drank the master’s grappa and I had a dream. Costantino and the dog, my sister Anna-Rosa. To hell with the little toad. Why hasn’t he come back?’ he thought, shaking his head. ‘I got as drunk as a newt. A drunken man,’ he said, going back to the hut, ‘is like a beast. He no longer knows what he is doing. He shouts out whatever’s in his mind at the top of his voice. It’s bad for you, Giacobbe Dejas, you bald head, get that into your nut. If I ever drink any more, may God punish me.’

A short while after, Brontu returned. Giacobbe shot him a hard look and grinned. ‘You look like a beaten man. What’s happened, my chicken?’

‘Nothing. Shove off.’

But the shepherd had no intention of going away. He circled round and round Brontu, nuzzling him like a dog, pestering, insisting on being told. Brontu told him everything – more than he needed to. Giovanna had shooed him away as if he’d been a tiresome beggar. Didn’t he realize, she’d asked him, that she had a son who might one day spit in her face and demand to know why she had two husbands.

‘Oh God, I knew it!’ Giacobbe cried, jumping for joy.

‘What did you know?’

‘That Giovanna has a son.’

‘I knew that too. Look, she threw me out. That’s all there was to it. From the street, I could hear the mother and daughter arguing.’

Brontu searched around for his bottle of grappa. Giacobbe felt happy; he wanted to laugh. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘last night the mice drank your grappa. Ha, ha, ha! But there must be more. Look, here’s some more.’

Brontu drank eagerly, without replying. Then he threw the bottle angrily at the shepherd, who caught it in mid-air. As Brontu had drunk out of sorrow, Giacobbe drank out of joy.

VIII

One morning towards the end of the summer, about three years after his conviction, Costantino awoke in a bad mood. The heat was oppressive and a sickening stench pervaded the room. One of the prisoners was snoring and bubbling like a saucepan on the boil.

Costantino had slept with Giovanna’s last letter under his head. The letter was terse and very gloomy. It said that Giovanna and her mother were living in dire poverty and the baby was seriously ill.

Costantino did not consider it cruel of her to write to him about these things. He wanted the truth, however unbearable, and it seemed to him that to share Giovanna’s troubles and agonize because he could not help her was his duty. A pointless duty, he knew, and this increased his anguish.